Speaker 1: H h, well I did it. That was yeah, please absolutely,
Speaker 1: Chris make it horny, like like really horny. Well, this
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards podcast that is introduced the way
Speaker 1: I just introduced it. What are you going to do
Speaker 1: about it? Find another show. I'm gonna listen to someone else. No,
Speaker 1: you're not. You're stuck here. You're stuck here with me,
Speaker 1: with me and with Margaret Kiljoy. Margaret, welcome to the show. Hello.
Speaker 1: How are you doing, Margaret? I'm doing great. Nothing bad
Speaker 1: or sad as happened, and I'm sure that we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about sunny sunshine roses. Yeah. I like thinking
Speaker 1: about good things. You know, did a lot that makes
Speaker 1: me angry in the world, Like, for example, Hollywood didn't
Speaker 1: really do anything good with didn't do enough good with
Speaker 1: Bruce Campbell when he was like young and super hot.
Speaker 1: What's what's up with that? How could you not? I
Speaker 1: just someone wants to talk about this on Twitter and
Speaker 1: they're right, like, how was he not in more stuff
Speaker 1: when he was like, you know, army of darkness young? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you not make maximum use of that guy?
Speaker 1: It's unbelievably infuriating. Yeah, his jaw is just left incredible
Speaker 1: on Yeah, you could bludgeon people to death with that
Speaker 1: jaw and they'd be happy about it. And you can
Speaker 1: almost kill him in every movie. Sam Raimi nearly murdered
Speaker 1: that man like thirty times, and Bruce just kept coming
Speaker 1: back for more, Like what a hero? Anyway a hero?
Speaker 1: I feel like we really lost out on some great
Speaker 1: Bruce Campbell movies, like why not just kidd no no,
Speaker 1: But just like when he was like super young, right,
Speaker 1: he's been great. He's he's aged into a wonderful career.
Speaker 1: Is like the old guy kind of aging action hero
Speaker 1: type character. He does that in a lot of that
Speaker 1: and burn notice and in the in the Ash Versus
Speaker 1: the Evil Dead show, Like he's had a wonderful career.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's very happy. But like young Bruce Campbell,
Speaker 1: think about like why not why not try him as
Speaker 1: a superman, Like just throw it in there, just see
Speaker 1: what we get, you know, just cast Bruce Campbell is
Speaker 1: Superman and let it happen um and have Sam Raimie directed,
Speaker 1: Like my god, can you imagine that movie? That would
Speaker 1: have been nuts. I'm trying to delay us getting back
Speaker 1: to a very uncomfortable series of conversations. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: about to get a lot worse. Um. Thanks, thanks everyone
Speaker 1: for tuning into this episode where there's absolutely like no no,
Speaker 1: no joy, Like we can't, we don't even get like
Speaker 1: the moment of laughing at at Hitler being given fucking
Speaker 1: cocaine by his doctor who's angry at the other doctor
Speaker 1: for giving him herold, like, those are the good moments,
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that made this show with it.
Speaker 1: None of those in this story. So yeah, when we
Speaker 1: last left off Christine, she had provided four chan with
Speaker 1: evidence of that she was not you know that she
Speaker 1: was straight by giving hand drawn pornography of one of
Speaker 1: her few real life friends, which is bad bad call, um,
Speaker 1: generally bad call. Not generally a bad call, always a
Speaker 1: bad call. Don't what if it had worked, though? What
Speaker 1: if the friend had been like, it's true, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about you this whole time. That's not a zero
Speaker 1: percent chance, but it's not a betting chance. Like someone
Speaker 1: out there there kink would be realizing that their friend
Speaker 1: had had, without asking for their consent, written pornography about
Speaker 1: them and handed it to fortune. That person exists, right,
Speaker 1: but yeah enough, yeah, um, but that person is also
Speaker 1: on four chan. Right, so there is a there is
Speaker 1: a um. Yeah. Anyway, so this goes bad and it
Speaker 1: also kind of super charges this growing fandom. It is
Speaker 1: kind of a fandom. I think you have to look
Speaker 1: at it that way. Um. Around Christian like people realize
Speaker 1: not only does this person respond when you poke them,
Speaker 1: which is like the number one thing that lets a
Speaker 1: bully no, it's time to keep on bullying, um, but
Speaker 1: that you can get incredible content out of like lying
Speaker 1: about them on the internet and waiting for them to
Speaker 1: correct you in ways that make their entire life worse. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know she has she has basically proven herself
Speaker 1: to be like a comedy pinada for these people, right,
Speaker 1: That's that is how they're looking at it. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: um it's not great. This all sets off a three
Speaker 1: year period of near constant baiting by trolls, most of
Speaker 1: whom would pretend to be women um interested in dating Christine. Um,
Speaker 1: so they would they would reach out to her and
Speaker 1: like they would cat fish her with like photos and
Speaker 1: messages with the goal of getting her to like reveal
Speaker 1: shameful things to them. And again, this is a thing
Speaker 1: that happens a lot to all sorts of people. Now,
Speaker 1: this didn't really happen much like two eight, two nine.
Speaker 1: This is not as nearly as common as it would be. Um,
Speaker 1: and especially it was not a thing that people did
Speaker 1: to create content for huge anonymous masses of Internet users.
Speaker 1: Like this is really where that begins. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the first of these trolls convinced convinced Christine to mail
Speaker 1: them her beloved sonnet U medallion, this thing that she's
Speaker 1: like made, that she wears everywhere. That's like her most
Speaker 1: valued possession in the world. So this person pretends to
Speaker 1: be a girl who's interested in her and like asks
Speaker 1: for the medallion is like a token of love. And
Speaker 1: then when they get it, they post a video of
Speaker 1: themselves smashing it and lighting it on fire. Um cool, Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: we we really made a good thing with the Internet.
Speaker 1: You think back to like people saying like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is when people are connected. It's going to make some
Speaker 1: of the evils of the twentieth centre impossible to repeat. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's just gonna mean that like when the evils
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century are repeated, we like throw a
Speaker 1: fucking uh whatever um trance wave or whatever filter on
Speaker 1: it and stick like a meme joke on it. We
Speaker 1: sell t shirts of it and ship like I might
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, it's frustrating. Um. So she eventually makes
Speaker 1: another medallion. Um. And she in due time gets cat
Speaker 1: fished by another and on who this time convinces her
Speaker 1: to shove it up her ass um and like tape
Speaker 1: it and stuff. Um. On another occasion, she gets tricked
Speaker 1: into driving across the state for an orgy that never happens. Um.
Speaker 1: And these are all like some of these are the
Speaker 1: same people over and over again. These are a lot
Speaker 1: of different people. Um. Yeah. Yeah. So the worst of
Speaker 1: her cat fishers, I think, the person who like breaks
Speaker 1: her medallion and lights on the fire and ship goes
Speaker 1: by the name of Blue Spike. Um. And this person
Speaker 1: who is like carrying out what I think we can
Speaker 1: say is like profoundly almost psychotically abusive capers is thirteen
Speaker 1: years old. Oh fuck yeah yeah yeah that's scance. Um.
Speaker 1: Oh god. And because Christian is like what six or something,
Speaker 1: she's in her like mid twenties at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: And I guess one of the things that this kind
Speaker 1: of reveals is that the way the Internet enables abuse
Speaker 1: means that if you're if you're the kind of person
Speaker 1: who is incapable of disengaging in the way that Christine is.
Speaker 1: High school never ends, middle school never ends, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: that's good Like, so no one is so you have
Speaker 1: there's no one's that I mean, everyone's at fault, No
Speaker 1: one's yea, every everyone's like everyone's bad. Also everyone has
Speaker 1: something that means like, well, this thirteen year old can't
Speaker 1: really know the full limp locations of what they're doing, right,
Speaker 1: and Christine is awful, but also can't really fully know
Speaker 1: the full ramifications of the decisions they're making. It's just
Speaker 1: this horrible engine that has been built kind of by
Speaker 1: accident that is now like churning these people towards calamity,
Speaker 1: which is the ghost machine. Oh my god, because the
Speaker 1: thirteen year old could have been because like when I
Speaker 1: when I think about my friends, who were you know,
Speaker 1: I mean doing some version of this stuff in the
Speaker 1: nineties on various directions, like just the Internet didn't exist
Speaker 1: in the same way that thirteen year old could have
Speaker 1: also been. Chris Chan Yeah, I'm like, wow, Engine of
Speaker 1: South yep. Okay, yep. So they reveal the fact that
Speaker 1: they're a thirteen year old to Chris after having cat
Speaker 1: fished Chris for months during one of the most horrific
Speaker 1: moments in in Christian history, which is called Chris Tery,
Speaker 1: which is legitimately funny. That's legitimately funny. Yeah. Um, but
Speaker 1: this moment is I'm just gonna play the audio of
Speaker 1: of Blue Spike, this fucking teenager revealing this to Christian um,
Speaker 1: because in the voice of this kid is something important.
Speaker 1: Do you really want to know? Yeah? My chance? Not
Speaker 1: right now? Come on, please chance, Please, Julia. I've just
Speaker 1: been to a whole lot mess for you, just like
Speaker 1: what happened. I'll say that in private, but let me
Speaker 1: what you say first from your heart. It's so hard
Speaker 1: to say you love me, don't you? I do, But
Speaker 1: there's something else I need to say. I just don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't know how to do this. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to tell you this. Travisy nuts Cluth, He's
Speaker 1: not that there's like a breakdown, Yeah, Chris, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: came back. Now when do what happened there? But this
Speaker 1: is the fans for like five minutes and then I'll
Speaker 1: tell you please, A'm ready to tell you, okay, this
Speaker 1: whole time, Chris You've been having sex for a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old boy? You sick? Fuck? What? Yeah? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: that's that's enough. In that God, that kid's voice and
Speaker 1: like the glee in it, that's that's the voice of
Speaker 1: the soul of the internet. Like that is that is
Speaker 1: the disembodied soul of digital culture speaking in that momentum.
Speaker 1: That's rough. I used to do the opposite of this
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager, Like my friends hung out
Speaker 1: at IRC and we would catfish we have catfish petals
Speaker 1: and then like get them be like, oh yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna like phone sex you and get them to call
Speaker 1: us and trace their number and reveal them to their workplaces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And obviously I feel okay about that. That's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is very different because like Christine doesn't think
Speaker 1: she's hanging out obviously does not is not aware that
Speaker 1: this is a thirteen year old like and it's that
Speaker 1: that kind of and this is occurring the reason there's
Speaker 1: other voices. This is doing like a fan called kind
Speaker 1: of like a prototype of like what twitch streamers and
Speaker 1: stuff do. Now almost we're like you have a famous
Speaker 1: person and like people are coming in and like chatting
Speaker 1: with them and stuff. Like, so this is this is
Speaker 1: a thing that is occurring where he's talking to this
Speaker 1: person he thinks is like his online girlfriend in front
Speaker 1: of a bunch of fans that she thinks are like
Speaker 1: real fans of hers aren't. But no, does she have
Speaker 1: any real fa she does? It gets It's weird. There's
Speaker 1: definitely people who like, there's after her that that that
Speaker 1: that is that would be a funny thing to start.
Speaker 1: That's a good light to teach kids. Um, you're here,
Speaker 1: it here first, its name. That's pretty bleak, right And
Speaker 1: if that had been the absolute height of how fucked
Speaker 1: up things had gotten, this would be a really sad story. Um.
Speaker 1: But this happened two thousand nine. Um, and every harassment
Speaker 1: of Christine goes on right up to this day. Um.
Speaker 1: In her father died, leaving her and her mother in
Speaker 1: an increasing increasingly desperate financial states. Into this fourteen they're
Speaker 1: fucking house burnt down along with most of their possessions. Um.
Speaker 1: This is probably due to the fact that Christine's mom
Speaker 1: is a hoarder. You know, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: bad decisions made about how to keep the house are
Speaker 1: e fire safety. Um, these are not her mom, especially
Speaker 1: after their Dad's not a very functional person, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and Christine is not a very functional person, and so
Speaker 1: like things just get out of hand in they're like,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things. I'm not a cps
Speaker 1: is probably does more harm than good in my opinion,
Speaker 1: but like somebody it should have been in any any
Speaker 1: decent society, some responsible person should have stepped in and
Speaker 1: been like, this can't continue without outside intervention. Someone needs
Speaker 1: to take care of you both, right, you're not capable
Speaker 1: of doing that, right, Like not I'm not talking about institutionalization,
Speaker 1: but like just a nice person who could like sit
Speaker 1: down with him and be like, hey, you can't keep
Speaker 1: all these newspapers stacked up next to this old coffee
Speaker 1: machine that that sparks all the time or whatever. I
Speaker 1: don't know what costs the fire, but like that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that like the people who make fun
Speaker 1: of Christine kind of don't always some of them do,
Speaker 1: but don't always take into account that, like this is
Speaker 1: a person who's in like a danger is an unhealthy
Speaker 1: living environment for reasons outside of like the weird ship
Speaker 1: they're doing on the internet. Right, it's pretty pretty she's
Speaker 1: still at home. She hasn't moved out. She's not really
Speaker 1: capable of living indentantly. Um, I think she would have
Speaker 1: been at some point. I don't think she was inherently
Speaker 1: like incapable, but like the person that she becomes in
Speaker 1: part due to this, because like this fandom and stuff like,
Speaker 1: it's this constant positive reinforcement along with negative reinforcement. So
Speaker 1: she's both getting made fun of, but she's also people
Speaker 1: are giving her money, people are like praising her work.
Speaker 1: This like community springs up around her, and she believes
Speaker 1: that she's like becoming a famous content creator, which means
Speaker 1: there's not it to the extent that she ever had
Speaker 1: any kind of positive pressure to change in a in
Speaker 1: a direction that would lead to her being able to
Speaker 1: like take care of herself more effectively. That goes away
Speaker 1: because of all this, like it's both positive and negative attention.
Speaker 1: That's all bad for her. Yeah, yeah, got that thirteen
Speaker 1: year olds a grown ass person. That thirteen year old
Speaker 1: was a grown ass person. Right now, Uh, maybe listening
Speaker 1: to this show, Maybe listening to this show maybe feels
Speaker 1: horrible about it. I really don't know much about what
Speaker 1: happens to Blue Spike afterwards. I would hope they've become
Speaker 1: a better person. Most people I wouldn't put money on it.
Speaker 1: I would because they were Internet right. Yeah. I I
Speaker 1: caught window someone from my high school who did something
Speaker 1: real bad to me, like like ten or fifteen years later,
Speaker 1: bragging about it on Facebook, like, remember that was really
Speaker 1: funny when we did this one horrible, life altering scarring thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that kind of feeling like that, that there's
Speaker 1: so much cruelty in that voice. Yeah, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe,
Speaker 1: and maybe if you're listening, you should reach out and
Speaker 1: pretend like you're better and then be really horrible to Wait, No,
Speaker 1: don't do that. You should do that if you're willing
Speaker 1: to meet us in a secluded would without leaving any
Speaker 1: information about where you're headed. Um uh so yeah, um.
Speaker 1: All this financial desperation like one of the ways in
Speaker 1: which Christine solves it as she starts taking commissions from fans,
Speaker 1: And a lot of these are like ironic people making
Speaker 1: fun of her or trying to get her to illustrate
Speaker 1: like horrific things, scenes of like violence, and I think
Speaker 1: there's some sexual abuse and stuff in there. You know,
Speaker 1: it's four chance stuff, right, can your mind can put
Speaker 1: the rest together. Um, but a decent amount of it
Speaker 1: is genuine and and this is the thing that's I
Speaker 1: think it is also toxic for the reasons I've outlined,
Speaker 1: But a lot of people I think increasingly appreciate her
Speaker 1: and kind of the same way people do Edwood, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense, where it's like, this is a good artwork.
Speaker 1: These aren't good comics, but there's so much heart in
Speaker 1: them in such a specific and unique way that people
Speaker 1: gain a sort of enjoyment from it that's not entirely
Speaker 1: based in it's not really based in mockery, even though
Speaker 1: it's like laughing. They're not consuming her the way she
Speaker 1: intended for it to be. But there are people who
Speaker 1: do just like are fascinated in a way that's not
Speaker 1: just about being mean. Um, you know how art works? No,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, like well, I ironic engagement often leads
Speaker 1: to earnest engagement, because sometimes irony is just a defense
Speaker 1: mechanism of like something that you actually enjoy, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the same way that like ironic Nazis you're like,
Speaker 1: now you're just a Nazi, You're you actually just enjoy
Speaker 1: it and you cloak it in a shield of irony,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, you can do that in reverse too.
Speaker 1: I guess, so that's happening too. And again I think
Speaker 1: it's part of like I'm sure Christine loves that dimension
Speaker 1: of it. I also, again, I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: like helping to keep her from ever growing as a
Speaker 1: person in ways that could I'm talking about growing out
Speaker 1: of like liking weird sonic art or making comics, but
Speaker 1: like growing out of being unable to take care of
Speaker 1: herself in basic human ways. Um, yeah, not knowing how
Speaker 1: to react and yeah, not some of these would conflict
Speaker 1: not only had like yeah, like I I don't think
Speaker 1: she was inherently incapable of growing in those ways, but
Speaker 1: I think becoming the center of this circus kind of
Speaker 1: locked her into continuing to play these roles in the
Speaker 1: way that like when you get rich and famous at
Speaker 1: age eighteen for something, a lot of times you never
Speaker 1: grow up. We've seen this a bunch. There's that there's
Speaker 1: that great line and um Bow Jack Horsemen where they
Speaker 1: make the I figet which characters but says that like
Speaker 1: whatever age you get rich at, you never like that's
Speaker 1: the age you stop developing as a human being. And
Speaker 1: I think you can make a similar case to whatever
Speaker 1: age you get like super internet famous at you just
Speaker 1: get like locked into that forever. Um, oh my god.
Speaker 1: That's yep. Especially works really well since like the whole
Speaker 1: Vampires class analysis ms kind of ghosts in the machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. So by the mid ots, most of
Speaker 1: the early places like something Awful where people had gathered
Speaker 1: to gawk at Christian life and her artwork had moved on, right,
Speaker 1: like something Awful, It is not really the center of
Speaker 1: of what actually grows into the problematic part of this
Speaker 1: is just kind of like where people start gawking. Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of people like I was someone who paid
Speaker 1: a tip, Like I've been following Christian stories since like
Speaker 1: two thousand and six or seven, you know. Um, so
Speaker 1: when I was like literally a child myself, I first
Speaker 1: became aware of this person. Um, and most of the
Speaker 1: folks who were kind of like in the were just
Speaker 1: kind of like fascinated with her eventually stopped tuning in,
Speaker 1: especially once the abuse started. When four chan gets involved,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who had initially been interested to like, well,
Speaker 1: this is really fucked up. Now you're not just gawking
Speaker 1: at like some weird outsider art. You're like abusing a person. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's this kind of growing awareness that something deeply
Speaker 1: fucked up is happening. In two fourteen, in a new
Speaker 1: forum called Kiwi Farms is created for the most dedicated
Speaker 1: trolls and observers of Christian. This is where Kiwi karms
Speaker 1: Farms comes from, is specifically to follow and mock Christian,
Speaker 1: so they escalate things even beyond what four chan had done.
Speaker 1: Some forum members took photos of the Chandler's homes from
Speaker 1: the street. At one point, Christian and her mother assaulted
Speaker 1: the owner of a gaming store with a car because
Speaker 1: Christian had been banned from the gaming store and so like,
Speaker 1: she and her mom attacked this person, which is again
Speaker 1: not great people. Like not great people. Um. When both
Speaker 1: had their court date, people from Kiwi Farms are there
Speaker 1: to document it for the lowells. Like there's like people
Speaker 1: actually show up inmport to watch this. Yeah. We should
Speaker 1: trick them into becoming war correspondence. Yeah, get them to
Speaker 1: like troll some specific Russian conscript by joining a territorial
Speaker 1: defense battalion. Yeah, or just troll the concept of like
Speaker 1: an s U twenty nine by getting bombed or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Um, so I'm gonna read a quote
Speaker 1: from a write up in New York Magazine. Here. Over
Speaker 1: the eight years, they've contacted Chandler, her pastor, and her parents,
Speaker 1: posing as journalists, former classmates, psychiatrists, potential business partners, and others,
Speaker 1: and the hopes that these ruses yield more confidential info. Twice,
Speaker 1: female Kiwi farmers arranged real life dates with Chandler. Both
Speaker 1: of them used fake names and wore wires to record
Speaker 1: these outings. Packages and letters are routinely sent to Chandler's residents,
Speaker 1: many of which contain obscene materials designed to unsettle the recipients.
Speaker 1: In one instance, someone sent prostitutes to visit Chandler's house,
Speaker 1: then called the family to taunt them about it. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, so we're we're well passed, just like, oh
Speaker 1: look at this weird stuff. You know. Yeah, if every
Speaker 1: day you've ever been on was a joke at your expense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is happening right around the same time gamer
Speaker 1: Gate is and everyone else, and this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing like when gamer get hit everyone around me.
Speaker 1: I remember being so surprised at what was happening, And
Speaker 1: even before Kiwi Farms, I had been seeing versions of
Speaker 1: that stuff happened to fucking Christian. I think there were
Speaker 1: few people like that who were like, oh, ship, this
Speaker 1: has gone everywhere now, like this is broken containment. You know,
Speaker 1: this is not just like how the Internet deals with
Speaker 1: their special person that they're all obsessed with. This is
Speaker 1: like now with a set of tactics that are used
Speaker 1: on a wide variety of people, but of course like
Speaker 1: the most even then, like, considering how fucked up gamer
Speaker 1: Gate is, I think Christian deals with more fucked up
Speaker 1: and targeted harassment than any of the gamer Gate victims.
Speaker 1: Not to minimize it, but like, right, this is some
Speaker 1: This is so comprehensive. And and again at the point
Speaker 1: at which gamer Gate starts, this has been going on
Speaker 1: almost a decade, right well, and it's like most of
Speaker 1: the gamer Gate people have probably had get to have
Speaker 1: real friends in their life instead of just ironic friends
Speaker 1: who are trolling them. Yeah. I hope at least for
Speaker 1: the gamer Gate people, you know, for the gamer Gate victims.
Speaker 1: Not I don't care what happens to them because of
Speaker 1: those people, but this is like, this is her entire
Speaker 1: adult life is dealing with this pretty much. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't even know well of co what. Yeah, it's impossible
Speaker 1: to comprehend what that would do to you. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I I've talked to and I've had the experience
Speaker 1: of like, you know, the kind of high school experience
Speaker 1: of being like, oh, I've been invited to a party.
Speaker 1: I bet it's just to make fun of me, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: you know and like and and and that plays a number.
Speaker 1: You know that that messes with your sense of self
Speaker 1: twenty years later, right, But that was like once, you know,
Speaker 1: or like or over the period of a year or
Speaker 1: two or something, you know, just the idea that someone's
Speaker 1: entire life from middle school on. It's a hell. It's
Speaker 1: like literally a Dante's Inferno. I've never read Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: but let's pretend like I have. Yeah, it's mostly about
Speaker 1: a dude wanting to suck a chick um, but then
Speaker 1: she dies, and so he makes fun of the governor
Speaker 1: of Venice a lot something like that. If I'm remembering
Speaker 1: my Dante rights, it's really horny and it's petty grievances.
Speaker 1: It's actually not from Christian has put it together like that.
Speaker 1: How many of the greatest pieces of art and history
Speaker 1: where someone who just like I live in a private
Speaker 1: world and I'm write about it. Yeah, I'm angry this
Speaker 1: relationship didn't work out, and I have specific petty grievances
Speaker 1: about local elected officials. Now I'm going to create one
Speaker 1: of the most infamous works of art in the history
Speaker 1: of human learning. It's pretty it's pretty funny, it's pretty dope. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: you know what else he's doe products and services that
Speaker 1: people can spend money at. Oh my god, there's nothing
Speaker 1: as good as a product and a service. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: wasn't my best transition. I'll figure it out for the
Speaker 1: next one. All in sight can be so good. Violence
Speaker 1: against a him or something. I don't know, we'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. Here's ads. We're back. You know. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about like getting bullied. And some of the worst ship
Speaker 1: I ever had to deal with was like from one
Speaker 1: of my teachers. We had this fucking in Texas, you
Speaker 1: have to take Texas history class, right, which because it's
Speaker 1: always a nation, so that horseshit, like always horseshit. In
Speaker 1: my experience, it was nothing but nonsense. Um, and they
Speaker 1: really gloss over the slavery stuff, by the way, especially
Speaker 1: since my Texas history teacher was also the I think
Speaker 1: it was the volleyball coach. It might have been tennis.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time at this point, but he
Speaker 1: was a coach, right, He was one of these, like
Speaker 1: like more, most of my history teachers were mainly coaches
Speaker 1: who then they got stuck teaching history. And I would, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I played D and D and ship as
Speaker 1: a kid, and so I would like take my D
Speaker 1: and D books with me around and like read them
Speaker 1: in between classes and stuff when I had free time.
Speaker 1: And this fucking day he like see it. I'm not
Speaker 1: like reading it in class. It's just like below my
Speaker 1: stack of books, and he like grabs it and he
Speaker 1: walks to the front of the class and he starts
Speaker 1: like reading from it and making me explain things and
Speaker 1: laughing at me in front of the class. I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I it's entirely possible. I said some
Speaker 1: things that would have gotten me arrested if my friends
Speaker 1: hadn't been such good friends, because I definitely like said
Speaker 1: some column biny shit about that, dude, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: because when you're a teenager and you don't know how
Speaker 1: to deal with conflict. Yeah, fucking a god, damn, I
Speaker 1: fucking hate uh, Texas schools. My my gym teacher made
Speaker 1: fun of my duck boots in front of the entire class. Jesus,
Speaker 1: and I never wore duck boots again. I still haven't
Speaker 1: worn duck boots again. They're really they're great boots. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure you look excellent duck boots. Yeah, I need
Speaker 1: a good pair it with a nice heal on it. Man, anyway,
Speaker 1: we need to like No, that's that's legally excitement. Um So, Christine,
Speaker 1: at no point in the story has been a particularly
Speaker 1: healthy person. Obviously, you know, even before the Internet really
Speaker 1: got involved, she expressed homophobia and racism. But years upon
Speaker 1: years of ceaseless, demented harassment did not help matters. Over
Speaker 1: the years, a group of trolls started working in a
Speaker 1: concerted fashion to convince Christian, who always had a tenuous
Speaker 1: grip on reality, that other dimensions existed, and that her
Speaker 1: cartoon characters and cartoon girlfriends and cartoon child that she
Speaker 1: had all created for this cartoon series she's been drawing
Speaker 1: for years were real somewhere in the universe. Now there's
Speaker 1: a whole timeline you can read online in painful detail
Speaker 1: if you want to. Um, I want to quote now
Speaker 1: from a section from Chris Chan's absolutely Voluminous Dedicated WICKI
Speaker 1: hosted on Sanna Chew dot com for some reference as
Speaker 1: to the scale of the obsession we're dealing with here.
Speaker 1: Now the Quickie, you know, the wiki dedicated to the
Speaker 1: c w C. That's that's her initials currently has two thousand,
Speaker 1: one ninety seven articles. The okay, it's out of it's mind.
Speaker 1: How have I not heard of the most famous person
Speaker 1: in history? It's it's it's you had to Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: get to that quote. In September two seventeen, Joshua Wise
Speaker 1: contacted Christine to commission artwork with the two win contact
Speaker 1: why Is decided to see for himself Christine's gallibility. In
Speaker 1: late October two seventeen, he again contacted Christine, posing as
Speaker 1: John Yamata. As Yamada Why Is claimed to be a
Speaker 1: soldier from Game Industry, a location set in the franchise
Speaker 1: Hyperdimension Neptunia, and inquired if Christine still had her old
Speaker 1: Sega Dreamcast console, telling her it contained a partial portal
Speaker 1: into quick Fill, which is like the fake version of Charlotte'
Speaker 1: Fille She's created for her comics. Why Is used the
Speaker 1: lore from Neptunia to play into Christine's existing preconceptions about
Speaker 1: reality and her belief that fictional worlds exist in alternate dimensions,
Speaker 1: giving her validation over those beliefs, which would both prime
Speaker 1: Christine for following under Wyse's spell and eventually encourage her
Speaker 1: to retreat further into his fantasy world to cope with
Speaker 1: her real world problems. So this snowballs into a group
Speaker 1: of which is like, this is like mental abuse, so
Speaker 1: of really like kind of hard to fathom scale. It's
Speaker 1: snowballs into a group of trolls, convincing Christian that they
Speaker 1: could destroy Quickville, her fantasy world, which is basically the
Speaker 1: only thing good going on in her life. Um, So
Speaker 1: they put the fantasy city that she's created up for ransom,
Speaker 1: and they start making her do a variety of horrible
Speaker 1: things to stop it from being destroyed. They had her
Speaker 1: confess to being a pedophile and confessed to raping her
Speaker 1: own mother. Then they threatened to release those confessions publicly
Speaker 1: if she didn't record herself shooting on the floor and
Speaker 1: punching herself in the face until she cried. At one point,
Speaker 1: they asked her to punch her mother, which she did.
Speaker 1: Oh my, so black Mirror is just a pale imitation
Speaker 1: Black Marrying got shipped on the stuff people have been
Speaker 1: doing to Christian for like fifteen something years. Um. So
Speaker 1: these trolls who are known kind of in the Chris
Speaker 1: Chan uh fandom. I don't know what you want to
Speaker 1: call it, but these trolls are referred to as the
Speaker 1: Idea guys, and they eventually blackmail Chris Chan out of
Speaker 1: a bunch of money, like six thousand dollars. I'm sure
Speaker 1: she has a lot of yeah, which she Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like, I think money that her and her mom
Speaker 1: need to exist. Um. This abuse is actually so horrific
Speaker 1: that it pisces off people on Kiwi Farms who think
Speaker 1: this is going too far and is no longer funny.
Speaker 1: So a group of these again pretty psychopathic folks on
Speaker 1: Kiwi Farms start dedicating themselves to dismantling these plots and
Speaker 1: even trying to force some of the Idea guys to
Speaker 1: face legal action. Um. The leader of this group, Null
Speaker 1: is also the main mod on Kiwi farms. I think
Speaker 1: he might have found it. I'm not as up on
Speaker 1: that stuff, and he's like was big into gamer Gate.
Speaker 1: He's extremely anti Semitic. He believes in like white genocide theories.
Speaker 1: He uses the in word a bunch. He's like a
Speaker 1: very gross dude. And the fact that this guy and
Speaker 1: people like him are horrified enough by the abuse level
Speaker 1: that has grown that they start to defend. Christine says
Speaker 1: something significant about how bad things have gotten that like
Speaker 1: this, this this motherfucker's like, okay, well that people are going
Speaker 1: too far. Um, it's it's it's it's pretty bleak. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much detail to get into. We
Speaker 1: could talk for tens of hours about this story, and
Speaker 1: some people have, which is part of what I find
Speaker 1: so unsettling. Coverance of Chris Chan ranges from the obviously hateful.
Speaker 1: The rite up of her life on Encyclopedia Dramatica is
Speaker 1: basically just non slot stop slurs focused around the fact
Speaker 1: that she's now transgender. Um. She comes out in two thousands, seventeen, UM.
Speaker 1: So this is like, if you've been following the Christian
Speaker 1: story most of the time this has been going on,
Speaker 1: that has not been like a factor in it. That's
Speaker 1: a fairly recent thing for her, um. But not all
Speaker 1: of it is like super hateful. The Chris Chan wiki
Speaker 1: is weirdly neutral. Um, I think they still miss gender her.
Speaker 1: But it's otherwise written basically like a history wold document
Speaker 1: Like it's not full of like insults and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some editorializing and judgment, but it's pretty straightforward. And
Speaker 1: then there are the documentaries. You can find numerous YouTube
Speaker 1: videos about Christian's life, but by far the most detailed
Speaker 1: is Christian A Comprehensive History, which is currently at part
Speaker 1: fifty nine. At present, there are more than twenty hours
Speaker 1: of content. Now I want to play you the opening
Speaker 1: to the most recent of it's these videos, which to
Speaker 1: its credit, does not miss gender her. These are not
Speaker 1: like disrespectful or mean, They're just profoundly unsettling in their detail.
Speaker 1: What made her this way? What is the attraction? What
Speaker 1: keeps us fascinated? This is the story of Christian Ah.
Speaker 1: On October sixteen, Christine published the final pages of Sana
Speaker 1: Chu issue twelve, marking its completion. The comic begins with
Speaker 1: episodes five to Be or Not a tom Girl told
Speaker 1: from the perspective of Sanachus, then son Robert sana Cheu.
Speaker 1: So that's like just analytical, almost like scientific in its
Speaker 1: level of dissection. They cover every moment of her life.
Speaker 1: And again it's almost there's a degree to which is
Speaker 1: almost more unsettling than the hateful stuff, like that you're
Speaker 1: not gonna find anything cool in there. They are careful
Speaker 1: once she transitions, because this starts, you know, before that point,
Speaker 1: but once she does, they're very careful about gendering her properly. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not mean, it's just detailed to an extent that
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone else's life has ever been documented. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's interesting because it's like if says
Speaker 1: that in the opening, it's like, well, what makes us
Speaker 1: so obsessed? It was like, that's the people who have
Speaker 1: a problem here. Like I mean, Christian has a problem,
Speaker 1: she's living in hell, but like, but these people, they
Speaker 1: have a problem. Yeah, this is this is a problem. Right.
Speaker 1: If a friend were to be like, so I finished
Speaker 1: our twenty of my documentary on this person whose most
Speaker 1: notable attribute is that they make kind of off putting comics,
Speaker 1: I would be like, so, we gotta get you help, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we gotta get you out of this, Like whatever you're doing,
Speaker 1: you're not in a good place, Like do you need
Speaker 1: to talk? Um, it's pretty pretty good stuff. Um, but
Speaker 1: it is. It is kind of worth noting that the
Speaker 1: obsession is not like entirely hateful. Um yeah, it's weird. Well,
Speaker 1: and it also that piece also shows that she's come
Speaker 1: around on LGBT issues. Yes, she's she's not come around.
Speaker 1: I think maybe some I I can't there's a lot
Speaker 1: of Chris Terry to get into. I could not tell
Speaker 1: you the extent to which she has come around on race.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope so, but I'm not aware of that happening. Um. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's like weird little fractures within these communities, like
Speaker 1: an encyclopedia dramatic at the people who document her like
Speaker 1: mock and deride the people who are like sending her
Speaker 1: money and making documentaries about her and like defending her
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um. So there's even like weird little fractures
Speaker 1: in this fan community. Um. And it's weird because like
Speaker 1: a lot of the folks, even with these kind of
Speaker 1: impartial documentaries, the people who follow them are a lot
Speaker 1: of the trolls who torment her. So it's all this
Speaker 1: like weird riberose of the Internet being a mistake. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know at this point, Kiwi Farms has largely moved
Speaker 1: on from Christian She's still a topic of discussion and
Speaker 1: from time to time. But um and in fact, she's
Speaker 1: like the kind of the first loll cow, you know,
Speaker 1: the first person they treat this way, Um, but they
Speaker 1: have a bunch of other They spend a lot more
Speaker 1: of their time focusing on other folks. I think at
Speaker 1: this point, Um, she's kind of beneath interest for a
Speaker 1: lot of them, they're kind of bored of it. U
Speaker 1: four chan is also more or less over her. But
Speaker 1: the years of obsession in the different pranks and ons
Speaker 1: played on her are part of the site's DNA. Now,
Speaker 1: in fact, the harassment of Christine Chandler has been going
Speaker 1: on for so long that it has it has had
Speaker 1: an influence on the DNA of the entire modern Internet.
Speaker 1: Like there is ship that like Russian troll farms were
Speaker 1: doing that was pioneered in the campaigns of harassment against
Speaker 1: this person. Um and yeah, it's it's this kind of
Speaker 1: architecture of harassment that is such a mainstay of online discourse,
Speaker 1: was built in large part to funk with this one person.
Speaker 1: And that brings me to the end of the story
Speaker 1: for now. This well, uh, late in um a user
Speaker 1: on Kiwi Farms posted a phone call with Chris Chan.
Speaker 1: The audio is a woman clearly a member of Kiwi
Speaker 1: Farms rolling Chandler talking to her about Chris Chan's desire
Speaker 1: for an incestuous relationship with her mother and if you remember,
Speaker 1: they as a threat got her to like claimed and yeah, exactly, um.
Speaker 1: Business Insider notes that quote. In August two sixteen, Chandler
Speaker 1: wrote a Facebook status defending a mother and son in
Speaker 1: Mexico who reportedly said they were in love, which The
Speaker 1: Daily Mail reported at the time. Although incest is quite
Speaker 1: a controversial topic, these are circuit There are circumstances where
Speaker 1: there would not be so much harm as one may think, feel,
Speaker 1: or believe. She said, unless the sex act was abusive, hurtful,
Speaker 1: or would result in an unwanted birth of a physical
Speaker 1: or mental challenge child, I would not judge or persecute
Speaker 1: the parent and child. Chandler wrote that she herself had
Speaker 1: dreams of having sex with her mother, although she never
Speaker 1: acted on them, and like, who knows the degree to
Speaker 1: which this is true? Um, because she also just says
Speaker 1: ship for reactions, But like, she's also getting pretty detailed
Speaker 1: in this. In this call with this Kiwi Farms member
Speaker 1: Chris chan states that the fan fix these like things
Speaker 1: she said to her fans on the internet about wanting
Speaker 1: to have a relationship with her mom, had become a reality. Now.
Speaker 1: I am not going to play any graphic details from
Speaker 1: this call in which Christine discusses molesting her very elderly mother. Um,
Speaker 1: but I will play a segment where the person calling
Speaker 1: her explains her interest in Christery because it provides some
Speaker 1: insight into how these people keep tricking christine relationship. But
Speaker 1: I just thought, because I'm not huge on Christie and
Speaker 1: you know whatever, I just thought that the hostntry franchise
Speaker 1: is really interesting. And that's how I got into you
Speaker 1: when I was younger, Right, but I had I hadn't
Speaker 1: had any idea that Barbara was that Barbara and you
Speaker 1: had that sort of relationship. I never got any of
Speaker 1: those vibes. But um, how did you approach her? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but care and cautious. It was a time,
Speaker 1: it was a time prost So I just gave her
Speaker 1: comfort to talk with her justly out slow and today
Speaker 1: and then I and I heard her positively like her
Speaker 1: make the first move she want, so she did really
Speaker 1: she made the first move. You hear that excitement in
Speaker 1: her voice when she gets Chris to admit to that, Like, yep,
Speaker 1: you get what's she's doing here, right, the degree to
Speaker 1: which she is fishing for responses. Um, And that's pretty clear.
Speaker 1: I think if you listen to the whole tape, it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear. Um. So it goes on. The audio was
Speaker 1: subsequently shared by null of Kiwi Farms, and in short
Speaker 1: order it goes viral on Reddit. Now that audio contains
Speaker 1: claims by Chandler again that she's molested her seventy year
Speaker 1: old mother. I have no idea whether or not Christine
Speaker 1: actually did anything with her mom. It is certainly not impossible, right, Um.
Speaker 1: But there's again numerous documented instances of Christian being convinced
Speaker 1: or led to lying about things, or even fantasizing about
Speaker 1: things that never happened as if they had happened, because again,
Speaker 1: she's been convinced that like all these sort of fan
Speaker 1: to sees of hers are real by like people who
Speaker 1: often pretend to be character she's created, breaking through some
Speaker 1: dimensional barrier and then like catfishing her like she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a great grasp on what is actually happening in
Speaker 1: physical reality anymore, um her lawyer, because this hall winds
Speaker 1: up being a big court case. Her lawyer seems to
Speaker 1: be making this claim, saying quote, Miss chandlers frequent and
Speaker 1: sometimes over the top presence on the Internet is partly
Speaker 1: a product of mental health issues causing misguided attention seeking
Speaker 1: and often provocative engagement with others. Um. So, within hours
Speaker 1: of this call going viral on Reddit, Chris Chan starts
Speaker 1: to trend on Twitter. Leaked text messages begin to go
Speaker 1: viral at around the same time. Um And in response
Speaker 1: to some of these Chandler tweets, quote, there is drama
Speaker 1: in the air today, Each and every one of you
Speaker 1: are all encouraged to withdraw from any and all dramas, gossip,
Speaker 1: rumors and whatever else will and already has approached your
Speaker 1: way today. So she's trying to like clamp down on
Speaker 1: some of the stuff. It doesn't work. She gets arrested
Speaker 1: on August one on suspicion of incest, which is a
Speaker 1: fifth degree felony in Virginia. Additional charges are noted to
Speaker 1: be pending. Her arrest was, of course live streamed by
Speaker 1: a right wing troll named Ethan Ralph in the video,
Speaker 1: Chandler was heard telling Ralph everything is going to be
Speaker 1: all right. The Green County Sheriff's Office later states that
Speaker 1: Chandler was being charged due to allegations of sex crimes
Speaker 1: against a family member. As you might expect from Central
Speaker 1: Virginia law enforcement, the fact that chris Chan was trans
Speaker 1: immediately becomes an issue. She was initially listed as female
Speaker 1: in the jails online system, but her gender was changed
Speaker 1: to mail a day or so later. The jail gave
Speaker 1: no reason for the change, and hooray, hooray, what's the
Speaker 1: that's the you know, most of the time when you
Speaker 1: think about like um uh, people who are in hell
Speaker 1: because of the way that their um nerdive urgence is
Speaker 1: treated by society, usually think about psychiatric institutes, right, and
Speaker 1: you think about how like M. P. Pull in psychiatric institutes,
Speaker 1: the you know, we'll put people in hell mentally. It's
Speaker 1: the democratization of that. It's the decentralization of you no
Speaker 1: longer need an institute to um completely ruin a nerd
Speaker 1: of viurgent person's life. Everyone can have yeah, part of them.
Speaker 1: We have essentially create allowed random thirteen year old kids
Speaker 1: in forums to craft little mental asylums that we they
Speaker 1: can then trick people into being in or force them
Speaker 1: into being in and locked them into using the internet. Cool, good, good,
Speaker 1: good thing we've built. Yeah, it's it's just Um, this
Speaker 1: is but this is like why I think people have
Speaker 1: to look at this and what has happened, because I
Speaker 1: don't think people often see that like that is what's
Speaker 1: going on online, Like this is a seedy underbelly. And
Speaker 1: from this kind of this gross little under billy that
Speaker 1: doesn't get much attention, the tactics that are pioneered here
Speaker 1: filter up and do get used by institutions and organizations
Speaker 1: on a grander scale to carry out targeted harassment for
Speaker 1: often political purposes. Um. And that's that's a story worth telling.
Speaker 1: And you know what other stories worth telling? Margaret? What's that?
Speaker 1: The story of how has an island off the coast
Speaker 1: of Indonesia where you, assuming you have several hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to spend um, and your friends, assuming they are
Speaker 1: equally financially well off, can hunt children for sport and
Speaker 1: for food. You know, I'm I'm vegan. Do they have
Speaker 1: options where they provide after I hunt the child, where
Speaker 1: they provide other other they actually have a Tempe version
Speaker 1: of of child brisket that that's quite actually quite good.
Speaker 1: Often when I'm there, I sometimes prefer the Tempe you know,
Speaker 1: not bad. You know, you can get and and and
Speaker 1: they'll they'll they'll mount your trophy while you eat, so
Speaker 1: you know, it's really great. Everything is good in the world.
Speaker 1: This bit is getting old. I feel good about old Sophie.
Speaker 1: This one's getting there. You have to go old Dorito's
Speaker 1: days when you when a bit gets old, you gotta
Speaker 1: keep it going for two to three weeks at least
Speaker 1: after it's old and many. Yeah, you got to really
Speaker 1: make it be a problem for folks, to be fair,
Speaker 1: it was old three weeks ago. Yeah, but I never listen.
Speaker 1: But does listen these products and services? Yeah, uh, we're
Speaker 1: back and I'm thinking about what the next bit will be.
Speaker 1: I can always judge because I cycled through a few
Speaker 1: and and really it's the one that makes Sophie react
Speaker 1: like she wants to hit me. That's when I know
Speaker 1: I found a good new bit, which I would never do.
Speaker 1: Never ever. You did throw a thing at me once
Speaker 1: you you harmed Anderson. I didn't harm Anderson. I accidentally
Speaker 1: cut you with a machete. Yeah, but you were swinging
Speaker 1: it Anderson. Yeah, but I didn't harm Anderson. She's traumatized.
Speaker 1: She's fine, she loves machete's Anderson knows she's always safe
Speaker 1: around me with a machete. Yeah, but her mom is
Speaker 1: all right. Well that was Look, there was a lot
Speaker 1: going on, and in fairness to me, I was on
Speaker 1: a lot of painkillers. So I feel like that's fair Sophie.
Speaker 1: And you threw you threw things at me, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I didn't make contact. Unfortunately. Is this all just like
Speaker 1: a little life lesson and about complicity and culpability? Yes, everything,
Speaker 1: every thing is. And now you're all culpable and complicit
Speaker 1: for listening. So thank you, thank you for thank you.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of complicity. Um, speaking of complicity, the
Speaker 1: jail system, the criminal justice system. But they'll be so
Speaker 1: good about both trans issues and mental health issues, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is definitely going to make everything better for Christine
Speaker 1: being incarcerated. So the judge decides to hold her without
Speaker 1: bond um, both for her safety and for public safety,
Speaker 1: largely due to the fact that there's like immediately immediate
Speaker 1: circus around the fact that she has been arrested. Um,
Speaker 1: the online ship show that's just always around her accelerated
Speaker 1: mightily after her arrest. In Local Virginia News, she was
Speaker 1: listed as a quote transgender internet personality. Now this is
Speaker 1: fucked up for a number of reasons, including the fact that,
Speaker 1: like the fact that she's trans is almost no part
Speaker 1: of this story up until it gets made that by
Speaker 1: the conservative media. Like it's pretty late in her career
Speaker 1: as a public person, and it's never really the focus
Speaker 1: of any of like the ship she does that's like
Speaker 1: like you know, trying to run down the run owner
Speaker 1: for video game store or something like it. Only it
Speaker 1: becomes the central part of the story once mainstream conservative
Speaker 1: media picks it up. Um. Now, that local Virginia news
Speaker 1: article I found on k v i A did go
Speaker 1: into detail about her background as an internet personality, but
Speaker 1: the article is still framed in such a way as
Speaker 1: to allege that like she is, like being trans is
Speaker 1: a a central part of her identity as a creator,
Speaker 1: like that, like like you see what they're doing there, right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to like there, that's the thing. The
Speaker 1: I think that kind of more mainstream sources don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with someone who's with Christian's actual story,
Speaker 1: which is very complicated and very weird, has a bunch
Speaker 1: of things in it. But trans people are always a
Speaker 1: culture war thing the right can grasp onto, and so
Speaker 1: that's just what they do here. And it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I can't speak for all trans people, but I
Speaker 1: know that, like, being trans is like not a huge
Speaker 1: part of my life, Like I mean it it is
Speaker 1: because it has to be, because I have to think
Speaker 1: about my safety everywhere I go. I have to think
Speaker 1: about how people are going to treat me, whether or
Speaker 1: not I'm actually in a good place. You know, all
Speaker 1: of these things right that people who are marginalized along
Speaker 1: a lot of different axis have to every day. But
Speaker 1: it's like I I totally understand the like, no, I
Speaker 1: just happened to be a woman, Like it's not the
Speaker 1: center of my like being, you know. It's it's like
Speaker 1: three weeks ago or so, people in Ukraine were just
Speaker 1: as vulnerable to getting shot by artillery as they are now,
Speaker 1: but it was less of a factor in their life
Speaker 1: because people weren't shooting at them. Yeah. Yeah, So The
Speaker 1: Daily Mail also identified her as trans YouTuber Christian Um,
Speaker 1: also calling her a YouTuber is not really particularly accurate
Speaker 1: because that's not really the primary thing that she did anyway.
Speaker 1: But again, this is the Daily Mail, so did the
Speaker 1: Blaze who? And The Blaze, as it describes her this way,
Speaker 1: describes Ethan Ethan Ralph, that that right wing videographer as
Speaker 1: a podcaster and streamer. It does not know that Ethan
Speaker 1: Ralph was arrested in two thousand sixteen for felony assault
Speaker 1: on a police officer and had a warrant for his
Speaker 1: arrest sent out in November one for violating a restraining order.
Speaker 1: He's just a podcaster and streamer. Yeah. Um. The corners
Speaker 1: of the Internet, who had been mocking or obsessively following
Speaker 1: Chandler for years at this point, reacted in predictable ways,
Speaker 1: and for them this became yet another chapter in her
Speaker 1: weird and winding story. But for the right wing media,
Speaker 1: Chandler was a perfect example of the danger of the
Speaker 1: trans menace, a suitably bizarre individual they could use as
Speaker 1: a scapegoat. On August six, while Chandler sat in jail,
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment of his show, more
Speaker 1: than five minutes of primetime coverage to Christine Chandler. I
Speaker 1: really do apologize, but I feel the need to play
Speaker 1: some of Tucker's coverage here so you can see where
Speaker 1: he takes this. A YouTube personality called Chris Chan has
Speaker 1: just been arrested in Virginia on of all things, incests charges.
Speaker 1: Authorities say Chan was having sex with his seventy nine
Speaker 1: year old mother, who has dementia. Chris Chan is a
Speaker 1: biological man, but he identifies as a woman. Reportedly, Virginia
Speaker 1: authorities initially went along with that. They classified Christian as
Speaker 1: a female, and that means Chris Chan, who is an
Speaker 1: accused sex criminal, would have been housed in a women's jail.
Speaker 1: We understand this decision has been reversed, likely due to
Speaker 1: public pressure. It became public unfortunately for the state of Virginia,
Speaker 1: and Chan is now being considered a man by the jail.
Speaker 1: But this is not an isolated incident. Many prisons in
Speaker 1: this country do house biological men with women. This is
Speaker 1: something we subpected. I think that's about enough, so you
Speaker 1: see what's happened here, right This story has been turned
Speaker 1: into what you know, a culture war issue over like
Speaker 1: the danger of trans people and women like in women's presence,
Speaker 1: like that's that's that's what Tucker finds useful in it, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And that's where it immediately gets turned Um. And obviously,
Speaker 1: the real story of Christian is of a an individual
Speaker 1: who is profoundly sick um and has been for a
Speaker 1: long time in ways that have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: their gender identity. Um. They are primarily the victim of
Speaker 1: abusive parenting, of bullying from peers, of an inadequate educational system,
Speaker 1: and of course of her own bad choices and bigotry. Um.
Speaker 1: All of these problems were exacerbated by an unprecedented campaign
Speaker 1: of online harassment, probably more significant and encompassing than any
Speaker 1: other single individual on Earth has endured. Um. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of things to take out of the story
Speaker 1: of Christian, But of course, once she went viral enough
Speaker 1: for the mainstream conservative media to focus on her, everything
Speaker 1: about her story gets boiled down to a trans ultrue
Speaker 1: war thing. Yeah, it's funny, as if it happened in
Speaker 1: the UK would be uh, you know, people claiming to
Speaker 1: be on the left who would be making this same
Speaker 1: cultural war arguments about sexual assaulting men and women's jail
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you can find
Speaker 1: folks on the left here who made that argument. I
Speaker 1: tried not to delve too much into the YouTube discourse
Speaker 1: around this arrest, because who needs that ship. Um. Chandler's
Speaker 1: time in prison or in court was as surreal as
Speaker 1: you'd expect. Um. She repeatedly has to go home to
Speaker 1: get some of her things, like her video games and stuff. Um. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: She told the judge, I'm famous on the internet, like
Speaker 1: interrupted him at one point when he was talking about
Speaker 1: his concerned that people would seek at her location, which
Speaker 1: is like why he justified keeping her on bond. Um.
Speaker 1: Chandler was present at hearings in November of one in
Speaker 1: February of two where her case was subject to continuances.
Speaker 1: Her next court case is July two. She remains incarcerated
Speaker 1: and her only connection to the outside world has been
Speaker 1: through written correspondence and phone calls, all of which have
Speaker 1: been dutally analyzed and shared with the community of people
Speaker 1: who follow her every move. A large reason for the
Speaker 1: continuances seems to be that her defense attorney is attempting
Speaker 1: to get her mental health evaluated. I think he's going
Speaker 1: for a like she is not competent to stand trial.
Speaker 1: I don't think she is Yeah, easy to prove, um,
Speaker 1: but so because these people are still reaching out to
Speaker 1: her and stuff, and because she is the person that
Speaker 1: she is at this point and has been kind of
Speaker 1: trained in the way she has been. Three days after
Speaker 1: her first continuance, she writes a letter to knowl from
Speaker 1: Kiwi Farms and her defense lawyer, in which she defends
Speaker 1: incests and claims to be Jesus Christ's reincarnation. Um yep,
Speaker 1: which is both like you could see as admitting that
Speaker 1: she carried out the behavior she's accused of, but also,
Speaker 1: I would argue, is pretty good evidence that she has
Speaker 1: not at all competent to stand trial. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's actually going to happen with this case. I
Speaker 1: there's not much to hope for I. I because I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of faith that like there's an
Speaker 1: institution that knows how to deal help her at all.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know what. Like this is like a
Speaker 1: tragic case where the thing that's actually needed is a
Speaker 1: very patient, very emotionally intelligent, nice person to help her.
Speaker 1: Social workers. Yeah, a team of very well paid social workers,
Speaker 1: right right, Like that's if we actually if those existed
Speaker 1: anywhere in the United States. Yeah, those are contradictory. And
Speaker 1: what I know is in social work wants out just
Speaker 1: because they can't afford rent. Yeah, but but that's what's necessary,
Speaker 1: is like a team of people who care need to
Speaker 1: like help the radicaliz is in't the right word, like,
Speaker 1: but like need to try and help undo some of
Speaker 1: the damage and help her break some of these terribly
Speaker 1: toxic patterns that she's gotten into. Um, she needs to
Speaker 1: not I'm not I don't think like banning anyone from
Speaker 1: the Internet is going to help, but she needs to
Speaker 1: not be online. Right. I'm not saying I don't believe
Speaker 1: that a judge should order her off the internet forever.
Speaker 1: I think that would be more harmful than any than helpful.
Speaker 1: But like what she definitely part of what she needs
Speaker 1: is to not be so fucking online, um, because that
Speaker 1: ain't doing any favors for or to somehow be disconnected
Speaker 1: from the like um yeah, like like I have a
Speaker 1: feeling that for her, and I'm so not a mental
Speaker 1: health expert or anything, um, but I have a feeling
Speaker 1: that the ability to continue to post content probably is
Speaker 1: like very important for her, right and like and probably
Speaker 1: very important for some people who earnestly like what what
Speaker 1: she does, um, but some way to keep the online coming,
Speaker 1: like if the internet became a one way thing for
Speaker 1: her somehow, like she has these people to like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had to do this where like you know, if
Speaker 1: I have an article go up on a website with
Speaker 1: real bad trolls, my friends are just like, uh, don't
Speaker 1: read the article, don't read the comments here, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the good ones and just don't look. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this is the magic solution to seventeen. No, no,
Speaker 1: there's there's no magic solution. Um, but yeah, something some
Speaker 1: fucking thing like that, right, um yeah, or I don't know. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: it's quite a pickle, this, this whole situation, um, and
Speaker 1: I don't know what's to be done about it, but
Speaker 1: like it's it undergird's everything that the internet is today. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all the things that people could do because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, people I know, or people would do to
Speaker 1: me things that they would then laugh about amongst ten people,
Speaker 1: and so those ten people would find it funny that,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever happened or whatever. And then I mean
Speaker 1: it's also one of those things where it's like I
Speaker 1: think things happen and this is a little bit projection
Speaker 1: or something, but like things happen to trans women before
Speaker 1: we come out, that mostly only happened to women, like
Speaker 1: to women who are known to be women at the
Speaker 1: time of the harassment or something like that. And so I,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that game
Speaker 1: or Gate, uh you know, the first large scale, to
Speaker 1: my understanding, large scale, systematic um use of this type
Speaker 1: of thing over more than one person. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a coincidence that it first happened to a woman,
Speaker 1: um who, even if no one involved knew that it
Speaker 1: was happening to a woman. And maybe it is a coincidence.
Speaker 1: And maybe I'm just like you know, looking out for
Speaker 1: like even my home of I don't know, it really
Speaker 1: depends on how she feels about still racist O kind
Speaker 1: I think she might still be. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it's certainly less less like of a thing than
Speaker 1: it used to be. Um she I don't think she's
Speaker 1: uh anti gay anymore? Yeah, But which which does show,
Speaker 1: like I guess some of like and this is both
Speaker 1: positive and negative because like the good thing is that Okay,
Speaker 1: so she's clearly capable of growth and change. But the
Speaker 1: ugly side of that is that, like all of her
Speaker 1: growth and change has occurred within the context of this
Speaker 1: bizarre world of internet harassment, that she's really the only
Speaker 1: person who has ever endured to this extent um. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, this is a hard sell when you were
Speaker 1: like the person who has been harassed more than and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know some people who had to like
Speaker 1: move houses and like, you know, yeah, I've had like
Speaker 1: you know, And then I'm like, oh, yeah, no, okay, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Fortunately she hasn't to my knowledge. Software I guess she's
Speaker 1: I don't know, the story that you brought up at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of someone being driven to suicide by bullo, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and that happening with maybe increasing frequency
Speaker 1: or maybe I'm just aware of it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard to like rate that from like is it
Speaker 1: getting more common or not? I don't really know, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I yeah, I hope she gets that, like
Speaker 1: uh unicorn social worker who uh can figure out some
Speaker 1: way to better enable her to exist in the world
Speaker 1: without being as prone to the harms that have befallen
Speaker 1: her as she currently is. Yep, Yeah, it is weird.
Speaker 1: Like I think if she had never it's that it's
Speaker 1: the kind of question like if she had never engaged
Speaker 1: with the people making fun of for stuff online, would
Speaker 1: this still be happening? And obviously you can't do that,
Speaker 1: But so much of it is because um, she never
Speaker 1: learned that kind of lesson that clearly people in her
Speaker 1: early life. We're trying to treat you the teacher that
Speaker 1: like you. Um, if you show people where you're vulnerable,
Speaker 1: that's where they're going to attack you. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: I mean it's heartbreaking though, right, because like, if we
Speaker 1: have a culture where in order to produce content you
Speaker 1: have to have a thicker skin, you are creating a
Speaker 1: culture where people who um are prone to having a
Speaker 1: thicker skin are the people who are going to come
Speaker 1: forward and be being held up. And you're also gonna
Speaker 1: have like people, you know. I feel like we've probably
Speaker 1: all known people who started off kind of cool and
Speaker 1: then as they got more famous and they started like
Speaker 1: not listening, they had to stop listening to their haters,
Speaker 1: because if you listen to people hate you all day,
Speaker 1: nothing good going to come with that. But then they
Speaker 1: stopped listening to reasonable critique as well. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like there's so many reasons why vulnerability should be a
Speaker 1: possible a thing that we can do, you know, um
Speaker 1: as as creators. And it's just I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have so many thoughts about this, and some of
Speaker 1: it is even just like the way that like like
Speaker 1: walking down the street as as as a woman is
Speaker 1: more vulnerable than walking down the street as a man,
Speaker 1: just like in general, right, you are like basically saying
Speaker 1: like I am more vulnerable, but if you do it right,
Speaker 1: it's a position of strength. It's a position of like
Speaker 1: I'm so strong that I can be this vulnerable, And
Speaker 1: I I wish I knew how to like cultivate that
Speaker 1: in in culture to allow that to happen more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's some I agree with you about the importance of that.
Speaker 1: I have no idea da how you because I think
Speaker 1: most of the people I know who have that it
Speaker 1: was kind of a process of um endurance that was
Speaker 1: produced by endurance eventually, you know. Um. And I because
Speaker 1: I don't want to be like the sociopathic boomer responsive
Speaker 1: like well that's that's because what they actually need to
Speaker 1: do is just like tough at out you know, and
Speaker 1: that's the only way anything good ever happens. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think kids have to tough out psychopathic things
Speaker 1: being done to them by cruel people. And I actually
Speaker 1: don't think that's a good basis for like an ongoing
Speaker 1: understanding of how society should work. Yeah yeah, um, I
Speaker 1: don't think people should have to endure any of the
Speaker 1: things that Christian has endured. Um uh. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that the answer to like what's happened to her,
Speaker 1: what's happened to other people who have been in variations
Speaker 1: of this is like, well, they just needed to like
Speaker 1: get harrassed enough that they got over it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ah cool. All right, well Margaret, Margaret, it's time for
Speaker 1: the plug. How you doing. Yeah, Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to hear about good things, that's an excellent no, Margaret, Margaret,
Speaker 1: what's that first word? If no? No, no, no, good
Speaker 1: good good good. Sorry, Robert's not familiar type dictionary dot
Speaker 1: com in the Google it's g g U D Robert.
Speaker 1: It's that thing that we do every once in a
Speaker 1: while around Christmas, get really drunk on mold wine. That too,
Speaker 1: But I mean that is a good thing. If avery
Speaker 1: an alligator in the dirt and start a fire over it.
Speaker 1: That is a good thing, depending on your choices. Just you, Robert, Okay,
Speaker 1: please continue, Margaret, I think I understand. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: am a host of a new podcast on I forget
Speaker 1: the name of the network. It's like a refrigerator zone
Speaker 1: is something about like a place that things are cold,
Speaker 1: a place that things are cold. You mean freezing yeah,
Speaker 1: on freezing media on cool Zone Media. I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: starting a new podcast called Cool People Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: And it will not well, actually, I'm sure there will
Speaker 1: still be horrible tragic things that happen, because lots of
Speaker 1: bad things happen to good people also, um, especially when
Speaker 1: people are trying to do cool stuff. But it is
Speaker 1: a show about cool people who are trying to do
Speaker 1: cool stuff or did cool stuff. And it launches May second.
Speaker 1: And then I also have like a bunch of books
Speaker 1: and music and all kinds of other things. And um,
Speaker 1: I am on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy and I
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. We're off following Margaret. What
Speaker 1: you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Come on, come on, it's just weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sunk off, Well, funk over to Margaret's Twitter account. Fix
Speaker 1: your error? Yeah, and uh you know that's the episode.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.